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FSM Newsletter 28 July 2008

Hello readers, and welcome once again to Free Software Magazine 's fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with all things free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Enjoy!

General announcements

Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week

IEEE wants its students to be slaves! --Below is a message I just got from ieee.org This is a message inviting me back to join IEEE offering non-free software from M$ for gratis.This has been shown as an attractive offer in the mail, But i feel it a confirmation message not to join IEEE ever after. Read more...

Why We Must React to ACTA --A new global standard for the enforcement of intellectual monopolies is currently being discussed by representatives of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. This new agreement is so important that it must be drawn up in secret, safe from the prying eyes of little people like you and me. Read more...

Dictators in free and open source software --Some people seem to challenge the idea that most (if not all) free software projects need a benevolent dictator—that is, somebody who has the last say on every decision. They are quick to point out Linus Torvalds’ past “mistakes” (see the speech marks): using BitKeeper to manage the kernel, not allowing “pluggable” schedulers in Linux, etc. Read more...

Help defeat Microsoft's OOXML format! --"The fight against the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard is continuing in many countries. In the UK the UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) unsuccessfully, sought a judicial review of the British Standards Institute's decision to vote yes. UKUUG are now seeking to appeal against that rejection of a review and you can help them." Read more...

FSF organizes against Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement --Nobody knows yet what the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will consist of, but the few available indications are so ominous that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has started a campaign to raise public awareness of the possibilities. Read more...

Jabber/XMPP client Jabbim 0.4.3 released --Jabbim is a client for communication over XMPP/Jabber protocol, written in the Python language using Qt (4.3), PyQt (4.3) and Pyxl library, which is a part of the client. The aim of the Jabbim client is to make Jabber approachable for common people, so it is a client for common users and beginners. Because of this philosophy the Jabbim client might not suit everyone. Read more...

The Death of Google's Patents --The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. Read more...

Tutorial : Create Urban Style Artwork/Wallpaper using Gimp --There are several ways to create Urban Style artwork .. You can make it from Scratch like in this Tutorial that I posted.. Or you can ease you work by using versatile Vector brushes..
Photoshop user are well aware of Urban/grungy style artwork.. But like my previous Tutorial I will use my favourite GFX program I.e. THE GIMP to create Urban Style Artwork.. Read more...

the new GNOME duality --First of all, I think that the GNOME project is in a really strange place right now. Others called it “decadence” but I’ve been thinking of it more as a state of transition. Things are changing in GNOME and I think that it’s largely just a reflection of time. GNOME has been around for more than a decade. Leadership is changing. GNOME is evolving into something else. Read more...

Network Monitoring with Zenoss: A Reluctant Administrator's Guide --By Terry Hancock. My wife and I have been using (and collecting) computers for years, and we’ve shared this interest very effectively with our children. Now I am the victim of my own success: my household now has four physical computers, one of them dual boot. All are on a single internal Local Area Network (LAN) with five real users plus sundry administrative ones on each. Read more...

Dictators in free and open source software --By Tony Mobily. Some people seem to challenge the idea that most (if not all) free software projects need a benevolent dictator—that is, somebody who has the last say on every decision. They are quick to point out Linus Torvalds’ past “mistakes” (see the speech marks): using BitKeeper to manage the kernel, not allowing “pluggable” schedulers in Linux, etc. As a software developer, I feel that a dictator is absolutely necessary in every free software project. Here is why. Read more...

Smail - the lighter mail server --By Ryan Cartwright. When most people install a free software mail transport agent (MTA) they plumb for Postfix, Exim, qmail or Sendmail. Whilst these are all fine, they can be a little over the top for some smaller systems or systems where all you need is some kind of local MTA functionality. In these cases many people will install their favourite MTA anyway — but there are more lightweight alternatives. Here I look at one of them: Smail. Read more...

Italian Perl Workshop to take place in September --By Marco Marongiu. The guys at Perl.it are at it again! The fourth Italian Perl Workshop is taking place next September in Pisa, Italy. Read more...

The Blender Foundation's "Big Buck Bunny" is a Peach! --By Terry Hancock. The Blender Foundation’s second free-content movie, Big Buck Bunny, is the product of the foundation’s “Peach Open Movie” project, and the results are impressive. Like the previous Elephants Dream movie, this film pushes the technical envelope for the “Blender” free software 3D rendering and animation application; unlike it, it succeeds as pure entertainment. Read more...

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